"And Zero at the Bone"

7 May 2025: Every time I come across these neighbors--every time, no matter the size--Dickinson's last line comes to mind.

Best mini-essay ever?

12 October 2024: I have started giving ENGL 204 students "mini-essays" on their midterm exams: short prompts where they argue a thesis about a text in 200-250 words. I have also been trying to make the prompts more open to their interests. This particular one--which invites them to talk about how something they read connected to their lives outside the classroom--stopped me in my tracks and legit made me cry. It's an absolute gift. I am so grateful to this student and, as always, to Emily Dickinson, who inspired her. 

"She can second-guess the sixth sense of the poem..."

27 April 2024: “She is like a receiving station picking up on each poem, unscrambling things out of word-waves, making sense of it and making sure of it. She can second-guess the sixth sense of the poem." --Seamus Heaney, quoted in this piece on Helen Vendler, who died earlier this week.

I was sad to hear that Vendler passed away, though ninety years is a lovely, long life. Her book on Dickinson is beautiful--full of riches that made me a better reader and teacher. 

“These are the Nights that Beetles love—”

10 January 2023: 

"A Bomb upon the Ceiling

Is an improving thing —"

The lines above are some of my favorite from the Dickinson poems we discussed in class today. In fact, I laughed out loud when the student read them. Just so freaking weird and delightful. 

Friday things...

15 December 2023: Gonna do a little list for this post...

1) Fall 2024 course evaluations got released today. I never really worry about these until the moment before I look at them and then I think to myself, "Is this the semester where it all turns? Where I am revealed to be an imposter?" Well, the "not-an-imposter" streak continues, at least for another semester, because they were really lovely.

2) Spent a big part of today working on the syllabus for my Dickinson seminar. That also meant spending time thinking about the last time I taught it--that strange, tough semester that was Fall 2020. That course, that material, and that group of students turned out to be one of the most important teaching, sustaining, and meaningful experiences of my life. Eager to give it another go.

3) Good reviews and the realization that man who made Paddington 2 also made it were enough to persuade me to see Wonka. And you know what? It was delightful. Very sweet and fun.

4) Just watched Susan Lucci win a lifetime acheivement award at the Daytime Emmys and man, do I miss my soaps. They really did help form me.  

Helen and Emily

27 October 2023: "I wish I knew what your portfolios, by this time, hold." --Helen Hunt Jackson in an 1885 letter to Emily Dickinson (qtd in Crumbley 752).

Really enjoyed this little piece by Paul Crumbley about Jackson and Dickinson's correspondance. It's full of great nuggets and a larger point about how differently the two women thought about the exchange and publication of poetry.

Works Cited

Crumbley, Paul. “‘As If for You to Choose’: Conflicting Textual Economies in Dickinson’s Correspondence with Helen Hunt Jackson.” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 31, no. 6, Nov. 2002, pp. 743–57. EBSCOhost.

"little Tippler..."

15 June 2023: Working on my entry on the temperance movement and this made me laugh: “The Dickinson sisters made wine together that they would drink with family and friends at the same time that their father was publicly supporting the temperance movement” (24). Worth remembering, of course, that temperance and abstinence weren't/aren't the same thing, but it's still funny. 

Post's title comes from Dickinson's best-known poem that invokes alcohol.

Works Cited

Young, Jake. “Dissolving Metaphors in Emily Dickinson’s Poems about Drink.” The Emily Dickinson Journal, vol. 28, no. 1, 2019, pp. 23–42. Project Muse.

42K+

10 August 2022: With the completion of the Dickinson entry, I have crossed the 42K word mark for the book, just a bit shy of 1/3 done, I think. Feels good, but "miles to go" and all that. 

Since "She's Like the Wind" was playing on Pandora when I added the Dickinson entry to the larger document and ran the numbers (as I sang along, loudly--no one else in the office suite today), and since this song/movie/singer means so much to me, I am including the video. Ha.

"eccentric Bereavment"

30 July 2022:

"To lose what we

never owned

might seem an 

eccentric Bereavement

but Presumption 

has its Affliction

as actually as

Claim--"

-Emily Dickinson in a letter to Sue, mid-1870s

Rereading Open Me Carefully for my entry on Dickinson...

"I was still thinking about the last poem..."

28 July 2022: "Participants at the community reading  [a 2004 marathon reading of Dickinson's works] were seriously engaged as they read; one organization after another took its place in the circle of chairs and became absorbed in the poetry as if settling into a study group. One of my favorite moments was when a young woman's turn came to read and she sat studying the page. 'Oh,' she said, when she looked up and saw us waiting for her, 'I was still thinking about the last poem'" (Hart 81).

Can you tell I am onto my Dickinson entry now? 

Work Cited

Hart, Ellen Louise. "May the Circle Be Unbroken: Reading Emily Dickinson After 9/11." Wider Than the Sky: Essays and Meditations on the Healing Power of Emily Dickinson, edited by Cindy MacKenzie and Barbara Dana, Kent State UP, pp. 69-82.

"Whose Sources are interior —"

4 June 2022:

"Reverse cannot befall
That fine Prosperity
Whose Sources are interior —
As soon — Adversity

A Diamond — overtake
In far — Bolivian Ground —
Misfortune hath no implement
Could mar it — if it found —" --Emily Dickinson, Fr565

Came across this one on the Dickinson Museum's twitter page. Would be lovely to be like that diamond, at least when I need to be. Working on it. Spent most of today alone, but got a lot done, had a great phone call with Vogel, and, especially considering a close-contact COVID exposure, feeling pretty okay.

Still thinking about volcanoes...

26 May 2022: I guess I am still thinking about Dickinson's volcanoes today; about how we can carry so much just below the surface. By the way, earlier this week, I concluded my entry on Ruth Hall with a riff on Mrs. Hall calling Ruth "a smoldering volcano." And that got me thinking not just about Dickinson's multiple volcano poems, but also this post on Larcom. Nineteenth-century women writers (or at least three of them) liked that metaphor.

Today was very quiet: no meetings, no appointments. I spent most of it in my office reading about Harriet Wilson, typing up notes, sending emails, etc. Came home and got some gardening done. Didn't even really talk to many people beyond a few sentences. 

But all day long...so many thoughts and big feelings in my head, some personal and some (for our country) much broader. And a bit of light in the darkness that is worrying about a dearest friend's health--a glimmer of hope. And, along with that, continued and profound meditations about what her friendship has meant to me. What a gift she is. 

Big emotions. Big thoughts and feelings. And such outward quiet. It feels strange but also appropriate, at least for me, for right now. 

I have never seen ‘Volcanoes’ -

 25 May 2022:

I have never seen ‘Volcanoes’ -
But, when Travellers tell
How those old - phlegmatic mountains
Usually so still -

Bear within - appalling Ordnance,
Fire, and smoke, and gun -
Taking Villages for breakfast,
And appalling Men -

If the stillness is Volcanic
In the human face
When opon a pain Titanic
Features keep their place -

If at length, the smouldering anguish
Will not overcome,
And the palpitating Vineyard
In the dust, be thrown?

If some loving Antiquary,
On Resumption Morn,
Will not cry with joy, “Pompeii”!
To the Hills return!

-Emily Dickinson, F165 

The Dickinson Museum's poem of the week. Feels somehow appropriate.

"One need not be a Chamber..."

9 May 2022: 

"One need not be a Chamber — to be Haunted —

One need not be a House —

The Brain has Corridors — surpassing

Material Place —" 

A lot of time in my own head today (not in good ways), so Dickinson comes to mind.

"Dear March—Come in—"

1 March 2022: 

"Dear March—Come in—

How glad I am—

I hoped for you before—"

Anticipating/holding on for this spring with white knuckles. So Dickinson's poem feels right for today. 

WV Symposium, 2021

 27 February 2021: I am not exaggerating when I say that all of my classes, particularly my Emily Dickinson seminar, helped me get through these extraordinary days. Today, I got to hear three of my Dickinson students present their amazing work at the WV Undergraduate Literature Symposium. I just sat back, watched them shine, and remembered how very lucky I am. (My students are the three young women in middle of the second row.)

"That is solemn we have ended,—"

26 December 2020: A little Emily Dickinson today from the poem-a-day email...

#87

That is solemn we have ended,—

Be it but a play,

Or a glee among the garrets,

Or a holiday,

Or a leaving home; or later,

Parting with a world

We have understood, for better

Still it be unfurled.

"My Emily Dickinson"

10 December 2020: Today is Emily Dickinson’s 190th birthday. The Emily Dickinson Museum has been encouraging everyone to think about “My Emily Dickinson.” Like a good student, I have been. And here’s what I would say: “This year, my Emily Dickinson has been sustaining. Her poetry—reading it, thinking about it, teaching it, hearing my students talk about it—has inspired me and kept me going. I’ve found myself escaping this world awhile while thinking about her words. And, in the kind of paradox she would love, I also found myself drawing on her words when I tried to make sense of this world.

This morning, I woke up thinking about “I cannot live with you,” particularly these lines: 

So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –
Despair –

What more is there to say about how perfectly this captures our moment? Separate but joined, sustained, but on prayer and despair. And, of course, connection—or the desire for it. 

Dickinson offers so much more, of course, but right now, that’s my Dickinson and I am grateful for her.

Dateline: Dickinson

6 December 2020: Spent the late morning/early afternoon watching a two-hour Dateline (aka, “The Husband Did It”) while pausing at every commercial break to grade a paper from my Emily Dickinson seminar. This led to one of my best ideas ever: Keith Morrison reading Dickinson poems. I should get on that Cameo thing and do impressions of this for $5 a pop.

Variations on a theme: incorporating Dickinson phrases into Dateline episodes...

"This young wife and mother had no time to stop for Death, but he, oh so un-kindly, stopped for her."

"Was this devoted husband telling the plain truth...or was he telling it slant?"

"The story didn't seem to add up. Was this much madness, or Divinest Sense?"

"Something didn't feel right, there, in the back of her mind, was a blue, uncertain, buzzing. Did her son-in-law's story really make sense?"

Dickinson and delight

15 November 2020: "In Dickinson’s poetry, cheer and mischief statistically outshine bleaker topics. The word despair appears only six times in the letters and 31 times in the poems, whereas derivatives of the word delight appear 108 times in Dickinson’s letters and about 55 times in her poetry. Mentions of the word pain are comparatively fewer, too: they can be found in only 30 places in her letters and a little over 50 times in her poems. Sometimes the word pain is paired with the word delight, like the poem, 'Wonder – is not precisely knowing,' in which she writes, 'Whether Adult Delight be Pain/Or of itself a new misgiving –/ This is the Gnat that mangles men' (F1347). In other words, Dickinson seldom frames difficult experiences in wholly negative terms." --Eleanore Lewis Lambert, "Emily Dickinson's Joke about Death"

Came across this article--this specific passage--while reading a student's paper proposal. It immediately stood out to me, particularly the observation about "delight." It's one of my favorite emotions, of course, surprise and joy linked with a kind of vulnerability, I think. And it's seemingly in short supply these days. 

Lambert reminds us, though, that delight and pain are linked, almost dependent on each other. Interesting thoughts on Sunday afternoon...

Work Cited

Lambert, Eleanore Lewis. "Emily Dickinson's Joke about Death." Studies in American Humor, vol. 3, no. 27, 2013, pp. 7-32. EBSCOHost.